Well, it’s not hard to identify the anticipated blockbuster book in August considering that it has a print run of one million copies. That would be A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train. When a young man is found gruesomely murdered in a London houseboat, it triggers questions about three women who knew him -- three women who are, for different reasons, simmering with resentment. Reserve your copy today!
In the August mix are three new books whose protagonists are former military men, all who have come home only to find that their tactical training is once again needed on battlefields of a different sort.
Billy Summers (by Stephen King) is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong?
If you like C.J. Box books, you just might enjoy Down Range by Taylor Moore. In this first book of a new series, decorated undercover DEA special agent Garrett Kohl is in the middle of an assignment in Afghanistan when his commander orders him to Kohl’s home state of Texas on a short mission. But Kohl is unsettled to discover that he’s moving from one kind of war to another. The once-peaceful ranching community he loves is under attack by a band of criminals who have infiltrated law enforcement and corrupted local businesses, and are now terrorizing Kohl’s own family. Hoping to prevent bloodshed, Kohl tries to resolve matters peacefully. But when the group strikes first, he has no choice but to go on the attack. This book has a 100,000-copy first printing.
The year is 1920 and Prohibition is the new law of the land, but murder, mayhem, lust, and greed are already institutions in the Moonshine Capitol of Texas. In Sandra Brown’s Blind Tiger, Thatcher Hutton, a war-weary WWI soldier on the way back to his cowboy life, jumps from a moving freight train to avoid trouble . . . and in true Jack Reacher form, lands in more than he bargained for. On the day he arrives in Foley, Texas, a local woman goes missing. Thatcher, the only stranger in town, is suspected of her abduction, and worse. Standing between him and exoneration are a corrupt mayor, a crooked sheriff, a notorious cathouse madam, a sly bootlegger, feuding moonshiners -- and a young widow whose soft features conceal an iron will.
I would be remiss in not mentioning a new book about … well … books! Sara Nisha Adams’s novel, The Reading List, is an unforgettable and heartwarming debut about how a chance encounter with a list of library books helps forge an unlikely friendship between two very different people in a London suburb.
Our curated list of August 2021 new books can be found here.